The invention concerns an arrangement including two conveyor screws which are arranged rotatably moveably relative to each other for processing a pasty material like a foodstuff product or the like, and in particular an arrangement having a first conveyor screw and a second conveyor screw which have interengaging helical flights and which, in particular, are drivable in opposite relationship.
Arrangements are known which are used, for example, for the automated processing of pasty materials like dough items, sausage meat, or the like. In that case, the pasty material, also referred to as the foodstuff product, is frequently mixed during the processing operation by known conveyor screw arrangements, and at the same time is moved in a predetermined conveying direction and possibly also divided up into portions. For that purpose, two conveyor screws, also referred to as conveyor curves, are arranged rotatably relative to each other with their in particular helical flights, in which case the material or the product is generally moved in the longitudinal direction of the conveyor screws with the mutually interengaging flights. Such arrangements of conveyor screws are usually a component part of apparatuses for processing dough and sausage materials, wherein the apparatuses in turn, for example, are used within a vacuum filling machine. A finished end product is produced from the material with such filling machines.
In the past, arrangements of conveyor screws were used that involved various profile shapes, also known as C-, D- or N-profiles, or also combinations of the above-mentioned profile shapes. The known profile shapes, however, suffer from the disadvantage that there are, in part, relatively large gaps between the interengaging flights of the two conveyor screws so that the filling spaces of the conveyor screws between the flights are only inadequately sealed off. The consequence of this is that, especially when high pressures are involved during the processing operation, at least a part of the material to be conveyed through the arrangement flows back in opposite relationship to the actual conveying direction of the conveyor screws. On the one hand, this gives rise to a loss of efficiency; while on the other hand, the partial return flow has a detrimental effect on both the appearance of the finished product and also on the portioning accuracy of a filling machine equipped with such an arrangement.